Chapter 6

The girl stood there, watching my reaction from beneath her oversized glasses, waiting for my response as coolly as if she’d just asked about the weather.

When I had mastered my disgust enough to speak, I said, “You tell Gret —”

“Nope,” the girl said. “Not a messenger. I get that I botched the whole lookout detail, but Gret wants to talk to you again anyway. You can come with me.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Aw, don’t be that way,” she said, reaching for my arm.

I jerked away. “Whatever way I am has nothing to do with you. And vice versa.”

The girl drew up, all trace of a grin gone. “Wow. They did a hell of a number on you, didn’t they? Gret said so, but I didn’t think — whatever. You still have to talk to her.”

“I don’t —”

“The way you ran? I know what that means. I wasn’t sure if Gret was right to be scared for you, but now I am. Come on.”

“You can’t make me,” I said. I didn’t have to know much about children to know that I sounded like one, but I didn’t care.

“Didn’t we just establish that I’m some kind of monster?” the girl said. “You don’t know what I can make you do.”

I bared my teeth, but it didn’t matter. Not in this body, anyway. The girl was right: whatever adaptation she had, I was powerless against it.

“Lead the way,” I snarled.

“Wow,” she said again, quietly this time. She seemed somehow disappointed.

Leela would be crushed if she knew about this. She’d never believed the stereotypes about nonstandards, even though her soaps always showed them relying on their adaptations to get their way. Leela thought that wasn’t fair, since the original adapters had died eons ago. While venomous serpetons, telekinetics, bean-sí — and, of course, werewolves — were still dangerous, the ones alive today at least hadn’t chosen to be.

Yet this real-world nonstandard in front of me had just used her adaptation, whatever it was, to coerce a stranger. I couldn’t believe I’d played my drum along with her voice. I wanted to apologize to the instrument for sullying it.

Abruptly, the girl said, “I’m Sandra.”

I didn’t answer. I assumed Gret had told her my name, along with all the other information she had no right to know. Meanwhile, all I knew about Sandra was that, based on her appearance, her pre-Static ancestors must have been primarily European. There were plenty of dangerous European adaptations.

One thing I did know: this wasn’t the girl who found the video. Gret said “Rosie” did that. How many criminal kids were hiding in Supplicants Grove?

Once Sandra led me past the grocery store, I was in uncharted territory. I closed some of the distance between the two of us in spite of myself. We passed shops and bars with peeling signs and dirty windows. A solid third of them were shuttered, with notices of eviction or building condemnation flapping on their doors. As we veered into a side alley, the roads grew narrower and more crooked. As we made turn after turn, I couldn’t stop staring, despite all the ugliness. After ten years in the compound, my eyes relished new sights.

We rounded another corner and Sandra said, “Home sweet home.”

At first, all I saw was a cluster of dingy businesses. There was a laundromat, a smoke shop, and a lend-and-loan, all of which looked abandoned. Then I realized Sandra was pointing to a long, low building set behind the shuttered shops, not even on a real street. It looked like someone had thought about building the town out this way, but decided against it after only one house. There were boarded-up windows on either side of the scarred and discolored front door.

“No way,” I said.

Sandra laughed. “See, Gret was wrong. You do have some self-preservation instinct. C’mon, it’s not as bad as it looks.”

Before I could argue, the front door swung open. Gret appeared, as sturdy and impossible as I remembered. My hands began to sweat. Gret stared from me to Sandra, who sighed.

“I was hoping I’d get to give an explanation first,” she said. “Shoulda known. Let’s go.”

We approached the dilapidated building. Gret retreated, leaving the door open for us to follow. The empty front room stretched the full width of the house, but extended only a few paces deep. A narrow doorway led to a dark hall. At my feet, a spot on the bare concrete floor had cracked like it had been burned.

Gret advanced on us as soon as Sandra closed the door. As she drew nearer, the dull room sharpened in that vertigo-inducing way I’d already begun to associate with her. I squinted and took a step back.

“What. The hell. Is this,” Gret said.

Her eyes bored into Sandra’s. Anyone, I thought, would cower before that gaze, but Sandra just tossed her head.

“Okay, first of all, don’t pretend you didn’t know I was checking up on her,” she said.

“I didn’t ask you to,” Gret said.

“Yeah, but you didn’t not ask, either.”

To my astonishment, Gret looked away first, frowning at her feet. “Did you — do anything?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Sandra snapped.

“Then how is she here?”

It was Sandra’s turn to look away. “I maybe indirectly implied I might do something.”

“What is wrong with you? We can’t trust her!” Gret said, her voice raising. “Tell me what you said!”

Sandra didn’t answer. Gret rounded on me.

“Well?”

I wasn’t sure whose side I was supposed to be on in this argument. I kind of wanted both of them to lose.

“She said I didn’t know what kind of monster she was,” I said. “But since you don’t want me here, can I go?”

Gret ignored that. As soon as I said the word “monster,” her shoulders tightened and her lip curled. An electric thrill tore through my body. She looked, for a second, like she might transform right in front of me.

She didn’t. Standing on her toes to push her face closer to Sandra’s, she growled, “This is how you’ll get us caught.”

Sandra’s face turned red. She shoved Gret away and marched out the front door, before spinning around to face us again.

“By the way,” she said, “your new best friend ran away from me like death was after her. So congrats, maybe you actually do have a problem to solve. Good luck with it.”

She slammed the door behind her.

Gret swore loudly, then said, “Rosie, I know you’re eavesdropping.”

A small, round girl edged into the room from the hall. “Hard not to,” she said primly. “Luc’s still trying to sleep, you know.”

“Blame Sandra,” Gret said from between her teeth.

Rosie raised an eyebrow, then turned to me with a sudden smile. She had deep dimples in her brown cheeks. Her teeth looked oddly sharp.

“So you’re the infamous Millie,” she said, her voice bright and polished like clean glass. “A pleasure.”

Rosie didn’t look like the gawky computer geniuses in Leela’s soaps. She wore a yellow sundress and glossy ribbons in her dark hair. She fiddled with a thin chain around her neck as she watched me watching her.

Something tugged at my memory. Had I seen this girl before?

“Millie and I have a lot to talk about,” Gret said. “Rosie, could you please —”

“If you don’t want me to listen, maybe you should talk on your way back to Millie’s house,” Rosie said pointedly. “Let Luc sleep.”

I wondered who this Luc was, and why Rosie was so worried about his sleep when it was nearly noon. She twirled her necklace again, and the dim light caught on the pendant swinging from the chain: the letter “M.” Without warning, recognition exploded in my brain like a supernova.

Rosie was a nickname. For Marirosa. Marirosa Guerrera. She wasn’t a child anymore; now she looked more like the woman who’d held her daughter in her arms while the court bailiffs had wheeled Leela’s tank into the room.

I lurched towards Gret. “You’re friends with that?”

Rosie made an affronted noise. Gret looked uncertain for the first time.

“I know who her father is,” I spat. “Do you?”

“Oh,” Gret said, which meant yes.

“How dare you?” I said, blinking rapidly. My too-bright vision pulsed with my heartbeat. “How dare you even talk to me when you’re with one of them!”

“I’m not!” Rosie yelled.

“You don’t understand,” Gret said.

A high whine in my ears intensified as Gret stepped in between me and Rosie with her hands raised, like she needed to protect Rosie from me.

“You don’t understand!” I shouted. “You swoop in and tell me that I’m in danger, but guess what? I’ve always been in danger! I’ve been dying since the first injection. Most of us are even worse off. They were going for a titan with Markie. That one they could almost call a success, if his organs were up to the task. Something inside of him’s gonna up and fail someday, but boy, can he lift heavy stuff!”

Gret and Rosie stared, dumbstruck. My voice wavered all over the place, squealing and cracking. I’d never shouted at anyone before. Now that I’d started, I couldn’t stop.

“Did you know they tried to make a telekinetic? I don’t even know where they found an adaptation donor. They’re supposed to be extinct. That one didn’t work at all. Dorina’s brain emitted some kind of impulse, but it just made the lights flicker in the compound. Shorted out her own system, too, a few years ago. Rumor has it every blood vessel burst under her skin, and her body wasn’t even recognizable.

“And then — then there’s my best friend. They tried to make her into a meer. Got it half right. She can live in water, but not on land. She’s been waiting to turn to dust since she was six years old, but Rosie already knows that, doesn’t she?”

A muscle under Rosie’s jaw pulsed rapidly. She tightened her fists on her stupid little dress, the fabric bunching. Before I could draw breath to keep shouting, a new voice screamed from down the hall.

It shrieked, “Will everyone shut the fuck up!”

Every hair on my body stood on end. After three frozen seconds, I wrenched the front door open and fled. For the second time that day, I was followed against my will. Gret caught up easily.

“Leave me alone!” I yelled.

“Do you even know where you’re going?” Gret said.

I didn’t answer. The agonized, unseen voice still rang in my ears. Luc, I could only guess, but that hadn’t been a trying-to-sleep yell. He was in real pain. I knew the sound too well to mistake it.

Gret remained silent as she led me through the tangle of alleys. I could tell that she wanted to speak, but every time she looked at me, she’d turn away again. I barely even noticed the other people on the street as we passed them by.

When we hit the main road, I said, “I know the way from here.”

Gret did not leave my side. “Who do you think the commenters on that video are?”

“EP.”

“No, you don’t.”

I walked a little faster. “Why don’t you go back to the Guerrera girl?”

Gret matched my stride, her hands jammed in her pockets. “You don’t know anything about her.”

“Tell me, then.”

“We don’t tell each other’s stories. You wanna know, ask her.”

“How ethical,” I sneered. “Too bad your code doesn’t include things like ‘don’t watch footage of other people’s medical conditions’ and ‘don’t threaten people.’”

“I didn’t threaten anybody,” Gret snapped. “And it’s not a medical condition.”

Standards teemed around us. I swerved down a random alley, and Gret followed. The only signs of emotion on her stone face were the blotches of color in her cheeks and the hard brilliance of her eyes. They were even brighter than the rest of the newly intense world around me. I was glad when she took a step back against the side of a building.

My voice low and shaking, I said, “I don’t care if you’re proud of being adapted for war. Maybe you think Rosie’s father had the right idea. Whatever. Just leave me the hell out of it.”

The color in Gret’s face drained.

“You were right,” she said. “You’re not like me. There’s nothing werewolf about you.”

She ran from the alley. I stayed there, barely breathing, until the wristband needle struck and brought me back to myself. I stumbled the rest of the way to my apartment, slid down the wall, and stared at the silent, empty room.

Until it wasn’t silent anymore.

“Millie!” Mr. Bicks yelled, pounding on the door. “Get your ass out here!”

My breath froze. I fumbled with the wristband. I hadn’t even looked at it when it stung me.

“Millie, now!”

The light was red.

Chapter 7

The wristband must have malfunctioned. There was no way that I was transforming again already. It wasn’t time.

When I looked at my palms, they were already hairy.

I fell forward, panting. I was supposed to have three weeks minimum. That was how it worked!

Except it hadn’t always been. Back before —

A key scraped in the lock. Mr. Bicks burst in.

He was pointing a gun at me. I screamed and threw my arms over my head before my eyes could even make sense of what I was seeing.

“I thought you were transforming in here!” Mr. Bicks shouted. “What the hell is taking so long?”

I looked up. The gun had disappeared, but it had to be somewhere, waiting to focus its tiny black hole at my head again. I was sure it was loaded with silver.

“I — I didn’t see,” I stammered. “I didn’t know it was red.”

“You didn’t look at the damn bracelet?”

“It’s too soon!”

“No shit. What’s the deal? Why are you transforming now?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know?” I yelled.

Mr. Bicks’s hand moved to his belt, and I knew where the gun had gone. My lips pulled back until I bit them in place. 

I lurched around my apartment, packing my clothes and toothbrush and drum. Mr. Bicks gripped my arm and yanked me out the door. What would Gret do if she saw this?

But I’d chased Gret away.

Mr. Bicks threw me into his car. Blinking hard, I held out my arms. He slammed the door.

Without handcuffing me.

Mr. Bicks slid in behind the wheel. I watched him, trembling. He always acted tough and important, but he was little more than an errand boy. On top of being a driver, he corrected easily reparable technology failures, unloaded supply trucks, and basically did whatever menial task Mr. Patter told him to do. There were always a few people like that at the compound, but they were all nonstandard, and they cycled out again as soon as they got their lives together. Mr. Bicks was as standard as they came, and he’d been at the compound for as long as I could remember.

For all his puffed-up pride, he didn’t take chances with us. He always, always handcuffed me.

A feeling that wasn’t yet pain, just the promise of it, trickled down my side. This transformation was going to be fast.

“Mr. Bicks, you didn’t cuff me,” I said, my voice shaking.

Mr. Bicks’s eyes were shifty in the rearview mirror. “Forgot ’em at the compound. Took ’em out for cleaning. Didn’t expect to need them again so soon. Why, is it happening?” he added, his voice cracking.

“No, no. Don’t worry,” I said, as much to myself as to him.

Mr. Bicks’s explanation made sense. Why would he need the cuffs in his car just a week after the last transformation? It wasn’t like he’d care that EP used “too much Ag.”

Right?

My soon-to-be-wolfish senses read meaning into Mr. Bicks’s harsh inhalations. Worry, fear. He kept clearing his throat and readjusting his large red hands on the steering wheel. He could turn that wheel off the road at any time, and I wouldn’t be able to stop him. I was at his mercy — until I transformed.

He’s just afraid of me, I thought desperately. No other reason. Mr. Bicks was a blowhard and a bully, but he wasn’t clever or ambitious enough to speak in code and discuss the details of my fractured biology.

Unless he wasn’t in charge of that. Unless his only responsibility was to upload the videos, and someone else was the mastermind.

We sped past the Petrified Forest. The noontime sun reflected off the distant stumps, sending shards of light into my eyes like an alarm. Fiber by fiber, the muscles in my shoulders stretched to the breaking point. I gathered my strength and held my body together.

Trying to stop a transformation was like clinging to the edge of a cliff above a bottomless canyon. Every law of physics fought against me. Beneath my wristband, bones shifted but did not break. I whimpered.

“Quiet,” Mr. Bicks snapped.

He didn’t know how close I was. He just thought I’d started to cry.

I curled into a ball on the seat. Mr. Bicks’s eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror. He snorted and muttered something under his breath. At any other time, I wouldn’t have been able to hear him. But with my girl ears about to give way to the wolf’s, I just made out the words in Mr. Bicks’s contemptuous grumble.

“Some ‘marvel’ you are.”

So then I knew. I could deny nothing.

The Petrified Forest was behind us now. We were almost to the compound. The car was silent except for our breathing, but a wordless wailing filled my head, pressing against my skull until I was sure it would shatter. Just when I couldn’t take it anymore, we reached the double gates. Mr. Bicks pulled through and stopped the engine.

The wailing ceased. I was home safe. There was no need to be afraid. Now there was room in my head for — something else.

I looked at my hands. The fur crept to the ends of my palms, but my grasp on the edge of the cliff was stronger now. That something else had a will of its own. It helped me hang on.

The sun blazed above us as Mr. Bicks led me to the door. The barest suggestion of a shadow pooled at my feet, a nearly nonexistent imprint of a body that would soon disappear.

We descended the stairs into the compound, just as so many soldiers and their weapons had before. My already coiled muscles tightened against the cold air. I clamped my arms against my sides so Mr. Bicks could not see the spread of fur over the thin, fragile skin on the insides of my wrists.

I reached the bottom before Mr. Bicks. If I turned right, I could go to Mr. Patter’s office, open my mouth, and tell him everything.

I continued down the hall.

Mr. Bicks walked close behind me. With every step, I became less able to turn back. My breath, calm since getting out of the car, now quickened and frayed. Why hadn’t I turned? Wasn’t that why I was holding on so hard?

A silent voice answered me. No.

Shaking now, I entered my room, where the cages were waiting. “Change,” Mr. Bicks said, closing the door between us.

Folded and dormant, the camera leaned in the corner of the room. I bent over its spindly black body. No blinking lights. It could not see me.

I could barely move my limbs, so tight was my hold on the edges of this form. Still, I managed to take off my clothes and pull the silver dress over my head. My skin seared, but I didn’t react. I just stared at my bag where I’d dropped it on the floor.

The big cage’s door gaped wide. Before I crawled into it, I kicked my bag to the corner of its mouth. I closed myself in, trapping the strap near the lock. The door could not close all the way.

I turned my back to the camera and stopped fighting the transformation.

I bit down hard on my lip to keep from crying out. The taste of hot metal filled my mouth as my teeth began to change. I looked down at myself. Mostly girl still, but not all. The fangs and claws came first this time.

Mr. Bicks barged back into the room. I heard him slam the door, but I did not turn around.

“You’re supposed to tell me when you’re ready, you little freak,” he said.

His footsteps carried him towards the camera. No, I thought, and like magic, Mr. Bicks stopped.

“Idiot. You want to rip up all your stuff?”

He approached the cage. Even though I wasn’t looking, I knew when he bent down to pick up the bag. I could hear him, smell him, sense him.

I whipped around and lunged.

My teeth sank into the first thing I could reach. I bit down as hard as the needle clamp had ever closed around my leg. Bombs exploded in my head. My blood mingled with his in my mouth. Standard and synthetic tasted different.

My tendons snapped and my bones broke and you need to let go of him, Millie — but who was Millie? Not me. I was something else. Ah! I remembered. Millie was the little girl, the reason for biting. I closed my jaws tighter, my face changing around my teeth.

I heard a strangled yell. Something solid collided with my skull. I slashed at it with my claws. A few seconds later, something harder and heavier smashed into my jaw, and I let go. I couldn’t help it. I wasn’t strong. The cage door crashed shut.